Ken Braun: Right to work explains why Tom Izzo makes more than a French teacher

Tom Izzo maybe wouldn't be all smiles if his contract was negotiated similarly to other teachers.Josh Mauser | MLive.com

One of the highest paid public educators in Michigan makes $3.5 million per year. You’ve heard of him: Michigan State hoops coach Tom Izzo.

Why does Izzo make more than your local high school French teacher? The Econ 101 answer goes like this: There’s a lot of qualified French teachers, but very few coaches who can land six Final Four appearance in 14 seasons. There’s a demand for both, but a very finite supply of the latter. The marketplace rewards accordingly.

It’s easy to criticize and denounce our culture for rewarding Final Fours so much more than French lessons. But is that really what is going on?

A more useful comparison isn’t Izzo vs. a qualified French teacher, it’s Izzo vs. the best French teacher in America. The real difference in pay is that we accept it when entertainment rewards excellence, but allow public education to get away with rewarding mere competence. After all, a decent JV coach knows the game. If the Spartans thought they could win titles by merely shelling out JV wages, then Izzo’s paydays would be 98 percent poorer.

Imagine a high school French teacher operating on the Izzo model. She is one of the very best French teachers in America and her lectures are powerful teaching tools that swiftly reach and educate students. They jump a whole grade level just being under her sway. Every school district wants her in front of their kids and - with video conferencing - they can have it. She has started her own company, employs an army of modestly paid local assistants to proctor her lectures at the individual school buildings, and another layer of roving tutors to provide hands-on help to the students who need it. Think of them as her assistant coaches.

With the feedback from so many kids and experience of her staff, she’d be adjusting methods and techniques constantly. Much like a coach competing at the highest level, she and her staff would start at the top … and get even better.

The upshot would be a theoretically limitless number of kids getting access to the very best teacher, and possibly that teacher hauling down a six-figure salary like Izzo does. And the best of her assistants would also receive much better pay.

It would also mean fewer French teachers, and there is the rub.

The major legal impediment to this outcome is teacher unions and policies that reward competence rather than excellence. Collective bargaining, teacher tenure and a pay based on seniority all stack the deck against a “professional” teacher having a truly professional career. But these policies all work in favor of more bodies paying union dues.

When Izzo wants a raise, his agent goes after it. The agent gets fired if the coach isn’t happy. It’s ‘Right to Work,’ like most other jobs in America. You get paid for success and punished for failure.

Imagine a mandatory teacher union for coaches. Coach Izzo must accept a union as his agent, and the union represents every other college coach. The agent keeps the job by making a large majority of the coaches happy, but can displease a sizable minority. Izzo has no individual power to fire the union. On the upside, to hold his job he needs only to win like the Central Michigan hoops coach. On the downside, his tax returns will look like the CMU coach’s.

Right to Work rewards excellence, not competence. If we really value educators like we do entertainers, then those are the values we should share.

Ken Braun was a legislative aide for a Republican lawmaker in the Michigan House for six years and is currently the director of policy for a political consulting firm. His employer is not responsible for what he says here ... or in Spartan Stadium on game days.